Mr. Russell has expressed these ideas in his other books. But here they are organized into what is virtually a primer of revolutionary idealism, written with a passionate soberness that stirs the mind as deeply as it moves the heart.

ch a free creative life
can grow, yet it is the chief motive which inspires the daily work of
most wage-earners. The hope of possessing more wealth and power than
any man ought to have, which is the corresponding motive of the rich,
is quite as bad in its effects; it compels men to close their minds
against justice, and to prevent themselves from thinking honestly on
social questions while in the depths of their hearts they uneasily
feel that their pleasures are bought by the miseries of others. The
injustices of destitution and wealth alike ought to be rendered
impossible. Then a great fear would be removed from the lives of the
many, and hope would have to take on a better form in the lives of the
few.

But security and liberty are only the negative conditions for good
political institutions. When they have been won, we need also the
positive condition: encouragement of creative energy. Security alone
might produce a smug and stationary society; it demands creativeness
as its counterpart, in order to